You want to perform an upgrade in combination with a system conversion to Unicode.

1. For which source and target releases is the Combined Upgrade & Unicode Conversion (CU&UC) supported?

2. Is the CU&UC supported for all code page configuration types?

3. Is the CU&UC available for all customers?

4. Are there any hardware regulations for this project?

5. What support packages, patches and corrections I need?

Below are the solution which is step by step explained:

1. For which source and target releases is the Combined Upgrade & Unicode Conversion (CU&UC) supported?

General Information:

The CU&UC is only available for upgrades to target release NW 2004s and higher.
It is not available for upgrades to lower target releases.

Target Release NW 2004s SR0:

Only source releases R/3 4.6C and R/3 4. 6D are supported and available for all customers.

Target release NW 2004s SR1 and all following SRs:

Source releases that are supported and available for all customers:
R/3 4.6C, R/3 4.6D,
R/3 Enterprise 4.70 Core with Ext. 1.10 or 2.00, and
SAP ECC 5.0.

All other SAP products based on the following source releases are supported and available for PILOT CUSTOMERS:

SAP_BASIS 4.6C, SAP_BASIS 4.6D,

SAP_BASIS 6.20, and

SAP_BASIS 6.40.

If you want to become a pilot customer, please contact globalization@sap.com.

Note: For MDMP systems on source release Web AS 6.10 and on source releases lower than R/3 4.6C a different procedure called "Twin Upgrade & Unicode Conversion" ("TU&UC") is available on pilot project basis.

The TU& UC procedure is only available for MDMP and Ambiguous Blended Code Page systems.

3. Is the Combined Upgrade & Unicode Conversion (CU&UC) available for all customers?

For target releases NW 2004s SR0, SR1 and all following SRs the CU&UC with source releases R/3 4.6C, R/3 4.6D, R/3 Enterprise 4.70 Ext. 1.10 and 2.00, and SAP ECC 5.0 systems is released for all customers. This applies to all supported code page configuration types listed in section 2.).

Note: We strongly recommend that this upgrade is done by a certified SAP Technical Consultant with experience in converting systems to Unicode. Please contact globalization@sap.com for more information.

For all other SAP products based on NW 2004s SR1 onwards with source releases SAP_BASIS 4.6C, SAP_BASIS 6.20 and NW 2004 the CU&UC is available on pilot project basis (see 1.)

The Internationalization Team (BC-I18-UNI) will monitor the upgrade process and provide quick development support via OSS messages. For enhancement investigation, we kindly request customers to send an e-mail with the following information to internationalization@sap.com:

database size before and after the conversion

export and import runtimes

methods used for downtime reduction

4. Are there any hardware regulations for CU&UC?

In some cases there might be additional hardware required for a Unicode system (compared to non-Unicode). The size depends on several factors, for example the database encoding format (UTF-8 vs. UTF-16), the code page and language settings (MDMP vs. Single Code Page) before the CU&UC, use of double byte languages like Japanese, and more. SAP 73606 provides detailed information; please refer to the documents attached to 73606.

You can download the Combined Upgrade & Unicode Conversion Guides and some overview presentations from the note attachments and from www.service.sap.com/unicode@sap -> Combined Upgrade & Unicode Conversion Library.

General information about code page solutions in SAP systems are available in SAP 73606.